Make the most of mistakes
KHS&S employees know when Suder isn’t satisfied.
He gets sarcastic.
He’ll have a snarky comment for a mistake that costs the company, such as, “Well, we could have sent two kids to Harvard for that one.”
Although he gets frustrated, Suder expects mistakes to happen. So he has set safety nets in place that prevent mistakes from killing the company. For example, his estimating group operates on a system of checks and balances, requiring several different perspectives to go into each project. That way, if one person misses something, there will be opportunities for his colleagues to counteract it.
Still, those safeties don’t prevent mistakes from happening.
“You wish they wouldn’t happen and you bite your tongue,” Suder says. “And sometimes, if it’s a big mistake, you beat yourself up a little bit — quietly, privately — but outwardly, you continue to support your team, knowing that there is a larger goal that we’re trying to accomplish.”
That’s where the coaching approach comes back into play. Suder will sit with an employee to analyze his or her mistake, asking questions to determine if they both share the same big-picture view.
“You talk about it,” he says. “You talk about what happened, why it happened, clearly what they would have done differently. And you let them come to the conclusion. It’s very difficult to force anything into anybody’s head, so you really don’t try to do that.”
Instead, he says, you stay patient. And if an employee fails to align his view with the company’s because of your efforts, you set up other forums where employees can help each other.
For example, Suder organizes round-table discussions without any executives present so employees can freely share both their successes and mistakes, hopefully helping each other prevent the latter.
So while he may get frustrated — and, as a result, sarcastic — Suder says the culture’s success lies in the way mistakes are handled. Instead of screaming, he and his employees work together to keep the compass pointed in the right direction.
“We’ve always said people are going to make mistakes,” he says. “So let’s encourage learning from those situations.”
How to reach: KHS&S Contractors, (813) 628-9330 or www.khss.com
